[HN Gopher] Wavve: making $76k a month turning podcasts into videos
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Wavve: making $76k a month turning podcasts into videos
Author : richclominson
Score : 202 points
Date : 2020-03-26 18:13 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.failory.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.failory.com)
| throwqwerty wrote:
| God that's impressive. takeaway: make products for people that
| use computers but don't know how to use suites of tools.
| jonshariat wrote:
| Automate their pipeline, save them loads of time and open it up
| to more people.
| jcytong wrote:
| Maybe your takeaway is right but there's also a huge piece that
| wasn't captured in your one-liner
|
| "We lost about 2 years of our time and $30k of my savings
| (which was most of it). "
|
| "Getting those first 10/100+ customers was really hard. We
| relied primarily on direct outreach via cold email and social
| media messaging to obtain those first customers. Taking the
| time to reach out directly to customers for a $7/month plan was
| painful"
| throwqwerty wrote:
| that's because all of that goes without saying (since I
| assume that the typical hn reader already knows about 1.
| pivots being costly 2. the early adopter grind). those points
| aren't key features of their succuss either because every
| startup experiences those pains.
| alharith wrote:
| Just watching the marketing materials and presentation once again
| highlights just how important marketing is. Well done on that
| front.
| paulie_a wrote:
| That entire article seems like the same person doing the
| questions and answers
|
| "What makes you so resilient against failure and so damn
| charming?"
|
| But seriously I dont take issue with the concept of those kind of
| conversions, the problem I have is they tend muddy search
| results.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Huh? There are no sorts of leading/praising questions like that
| in the article. If anything, I found the questions to be very
| generic and templatized - which again isn't a bad thing and
| seems to fit the profile of the overall site (a resource for
| young startups/curious entrepreneurs)
|
| The questions (for those who won't click through):
|
| "What's your background, and what are you currently working
| on?" "What's your backstory and how did you come up with the
| idea?" "How did you build Wavve?" "Which were your marketing
| strategies to grow your business?" "What are your goals for the
| future?" "What were the biggest challenges you faced and
| obstacles you overcame?" "Which are your greatest
| disadvantages? What were your worst mistakes?" "If you had the
| chance to do things differently, what would you do?"
| paulie_a wrote:
| The questions were soft even for little league. most
| interviews are marketing pieces, but this might as well been
| an infomercial.
|
| But at the end of day there is no innovation.
| cstrahan wrote:
| What are some examples of questions you would like to see?
| soheil wrote:
| I made a similar website here inspired by wavve https://0work.co
| marknadal wrote:
| Wow, even better / awesome! Thank you!
| vincentmarle wrote:
| I like this one a lot better, thanks for sharing.
| tasuki wrote:
| If you wouldn't mind me asking, what's your revenue? Follow-up
| question: what most likely makes for the difference in revenues
| between 0work and Wavve?
| Gys wrote:
| Cool company name!
| uzername wrote:
| Inspired by the Overcast variant of this kind of tool, I built a
| very basic browser based version using canvas and various web
| audio/video apis. It was fun to build over a couple weekends, but
| it ended up not being usable broadly due to speed (runs in
| realtime linear) and browser limitations of file export types
| (webm in chrome). If ffmpeg could reliably run in wasm, there
| could be alternative approaches. I concluded after I built it, I
| should make a headless non-browser version and it would be more
| usable, but haven't gotten around to it.
| mslev wrote:
| I spent a day or two last week trying to get ffmpeg.js working
| and it was nothing but headaches. If you had more luck I'd love
| to learn some details.
|
| My use case: trim and append multiple (4+) MP4s in the browser
| into one continuous video.
| ornornor wrote:
| I must be thick but... I have no idea what their product does
| after reading the interview. Can someone explain it for the rest
| of us?
| soheil wrote:
| It turns a podcast into a video with some animation and
| transcripts. I made a similar website here https://0work.co
| crispyporkbites wrote:
| Do you also make 77k/month with this? If not, why not?
| Genuine question.
| conjectures wrote:
| This is the missing description.
| nickfogle wrote:
| Sure! Previously, podcasters and musicians didn't have a very
| engaging way to share audio on social media. We built Wavve so
| creators can easily convert audio files into a branded video
| with an animated waveform. Here's our Twitter and Instagram
| accounts with some examples of what's possible:
|
| https://www.instagram.com/getwavve
|
| https://twitter.com/wavve
| ornornor wrote:
| Thanks. Do you generate the subtitles as well with text to
| speech or do the creators upload the transcript themselves?
| speg wrote:
| > Wavve automatically generates a transcription of your
| audio and makes adding captions to generated videos a
| breeze.
| blinky1456 wrote:
| I wonder if it is possible to make a simple version to run
| entirely in the frontend, for short clips?
|
| You can capture video and download it from canvas:
| https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/10/capture-st...
|
| And it looks possible to add separate audio to it:
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39302814/mediastream-cap....
|
| You could also recreate the waveforms and add to the canvas:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_A...,
|
| Not widely supported, but you could try to add speech recognition
| too https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/Web_Speech_...
| soheil wrote:
| Probably possible, but what would be the advantage? I know for
| instance using something like Google Speech to Text API is a
| lot more accurate than Web Speech API.
| hpen wrote:
| I was thinking maybe they used Deep-fakes to "turn podcasts into
| videos" haha
| sidwyn wrote:
| Baird is an amazing person. I've had the chance of talking to him
| and seeking advice while building out my own podcasting platform
| (https://kyrie.fm), and he's given invaluable feedback to
| younger, budding entrepreneurs. Great job Baird and team! Hope to
| see the platform grow even larger.
| keiferski wrote:
| The actual website in question: https://wavve.co
| marknadal wrote:
| (no affiliation) https://www.headliner.app/ will do this for free
| < videos/month.
| csunbird wrote:
| The side thinks I am using Chrome, while I am on Firefox
| mlcrypto wrote:
| Nobody should be making 76k a month when millions of hard working
| Americans are barely making 1k a month /s
| throwaway123x2 wrote:
| They pay their taxes that which helps provide social safety for
| those Americans. Should they be paying more taxes? Probably.
| Vote someone in who will increase corporate taxes.
|
| Criticizing successful people isn't the answer.
| saadalem wrote:
| Lol ?
| balls187 wrote:
| Their business is making 76k in MRR.
|
| They state their profit margin is around 70-80%, and have 3
| equity partners.
|
| Lets assume they split the profits as their earnings, and each
| partner makes exactly a 1/3.
|
| That would be about $20,000 a month (less taxes) or an
| annualized salary of approx $240,000. Which is very, very nice,
| but not worth spouting social change for.
| earthtobishop wrote:
| I can't tell if you're trolling...
|
| Also I find it hard to believe that there are millions of
| Americans who barely make $1,000 a month.
| cstrahan wrote:
| Check out https://graphics.wsj.com/what-percent/
|
| Plug in $12,000 as the annual income, and that'll tell you
| that 24% of U.S. workers made that or less in 2014.
|
| Looks like the number of full time U.S. workers in 2014 was
| 118.72 million:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/192361/unadjusted-
| monthl...
|
| That works out to be 28 million U.S. workers making <= $1,000
| per month. Considering that's excluding part time workers,
| that should be make the calculation fairly conservative.
|
| See also: https://howmuch.net/articles/how-much-americans-
| make-in-wage...
|
| The specific numbers have changed in 6 years, but I don't
| find it all that unreasonable to suspect that there are many
| millions of U.S. citizens making less than $1,000 per month.
| earthtobishop wrote:
| Do you have access to a formatted source of the data that
| was used to make the percentile calculator ? They claim it
| is based off the 2014 American Community Survey's Public
| Use Microdata Sample, but clicking on the provided link
| takes you to a directory with hundreds of zip folders.
|
| Also the last link to "howmuch.net" states that their
| numbers include any wage earners whatsoever.
|
| "There is one important caveat to keep in mind when
| thinking about our dataset. The SSA numbers include any
| wage earners whatsoever, even part-time workers like
| students and teenagers. If the worker reports his or her
| income to the IRS on a W2 form, he or she is included in
| these stats."
| pests wrote:
| Why single out part timers, students and teenagers? How
| does any of that matter when talking about Americans
| earning less than $1000/mo? "These Americans make less
| than that, but let's not count them"???
| Denzel wrote:
| Semi-rhetorical question: why do customers accept something like
| this delivered in SaaS form? It seems so antithetical to customer
| obsession when this is the exact type of problem that lends
| itself well to a locally running application.
|
| Why not deliver this as a desktop application that users download
| and pay for one-time? There's absolutely no need for an ongoing
| subscription to a backend service here. Outside of rent-seeking.
| oDot wrote:
| The explanation is that this is probably the best offering
| they're aware of, and whatever the price is, it's less than the
| value they receive.
| jcytong wrote:
| Maybe you can do it and compete with them?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Why not deliver this as a desktop application that users
| download and pay for one-time?
|
| Because when given the option, sellers usually choose more
| money than less money.
|
| Anyone is welcome to create a competing product and take their
| margins.
| raverbashing wrote:
| And buyers choose less money over more money.
|
| The one time purchase could have been, let's say, $20, but if
| I want to use it a couple of times, paying $5 per month might
| be a better deal. And you're always getting the latest
| version
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| Semi-rhetorical answer:
|
| 1. It still provides more value than the monthly subscription.
|
| 2. People have shown a greater willingness to pay for ongoing
| features and support in a SAAS model than in other formats.
|
| 3. It better aligns with the costs of support and maintenance
| that the provider needs to provide.
|
| 4. It's less risky for the consumer to get started.
|
| 5. There's no piracy or people decompiling your app and putting
| it out under their own name.
|
| 6. No updates to fiddle with and works across machines.
|
| Not all answers above directly apply to the podcast->video
| service here but these are the general reasons.
| csallen wrote:
| I built and sold an installable application in the past, and
| #5 was brutal. For some reason it's rarely discussed.
| crispyporkbites wrote:
| If your app was a SaaS those people wouldn't have paid for
| it anyway, they'd have signed up for the free trial then
| quit and signed up with a fresh email over and over.
|
| The best thing you can do is identify them and segment them
| into beta / test updates for experimental features which
| you wouldn't test on paying users.
| ThomPete wrote:
| I had a customer openly admit to me that they had been
| using a pirated version of my app until now.
|
| Pretty crazy when you see your own app on torrent sites.
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| Only when your goal is making money and not making apps
| to further humanity
| RussianCow wrote:
| Isn't that implied if you charge money for your app?
| tempestn wrote:
| Can't you do both? Why should people be expected to work
| for free?
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Making money allows you to invest. If you can't make
| money, the scope of what is possible is restricted to
| "what one guy can make as a hobby".
|
| Not all problems are workable within that constraint.
| scarejunba wrote:
| Exactly, a SaaS product is the ultimate DRM and it's
| socially acceptable. Make this a native app that needs
| always-on internet and customers who care about it being
| native will flip and eat your margins like a giant Pareto
| Pacman.
| devinplatt wrote:
| Cash flow? If it was a one time purchase they'd have to charge
| more upfront.
|
| Also maybe there could be automation with this service that
| saves time?
| heliodor wrote:
| The main point people make about differentiating your digital
| product is to not compete on price. A lower price means less
| money for advertising and marketing, so a losing proposition.
|
| What you're proposing with the one-time upfront fee model is to
| compete on price, so smart entrepreneurs steer clear of that
| model.
| hobofan wrote:
| With this specific product, I would argue that being OS and
| desktop independent is actually a feature. I can imagine that a
| significant amount of the users might even upload the videos to
| their social media profiles from their phone.
|
| The choice is between maintaining 2 mobile apps + a desktop app
| that is compatible with macOS and Windows and maintaining a
| single webapp.
| autonoshitbox wrote:
| Customers are typically stupid, cash-rich and easily exploited.
| stallmanite wrote:
| Sounds like you are really good at finding customers.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| Customers "accept" an explanation of value vs. alternatives,
| which is largely marketing communication.
|
| Your second (main?) point: "no need" / "rent-seeking" is
| addressed well by michaelbuckbee, particularly point #5.
| autonoshitbox wrote:
| Love to see brain genius programmers charging money for a Fourier
| transform of some audio.
| viklove wrote:
| 76k mrr with some contractors, this guy is printing money and
| I'm very jealous.
| Mirioron wrote:
| I made something like this once for a podcast. FFMPEG is a
| godsend. Essentially I took a video (could just be the logo image
| made into a video) and looped it to the length of the audio
| track. Essentially it just called ffmpeg with the right
| parameters. The process only took a few moments and gave me a
| video I could upload to YouTube.
|
| Back then I was really surprised that I couldn't find a service
| like this. Had I found one I probably would've used it.
| person_of_color wrote:
| That is insane revenue <3
| teejmya wrote:
| My favorite podcast app (https://overcast.fm) does this, here's
| the creator's post about it:
| https://marco.org/2019/04/27/overcast-clip-sharing
| [deleted]
| unixhero wrote:
| Sounds nice... but _Sigh_ , only iOS?
| Veen wrote:
| It's a one-man effort (Marco Arment). It's not reasonable to
| expect him to develop for multiple platforms.
| snazz wrote:
| The market for indie apps is far better on Apple devices in
| general. More people are willing to pay for an ad free,
| nicely integrated app than on Android.
| alexbanks wrote:
| Source?
| bnchrch wrote:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-users-spend-twice-
| apps...
| kick wrote:
| "App Store made almost twice as much as Google Play in
| 2018"
|
| https://www.cultofmac.com/601492/app-store-google-play-
| reven... Market Share 2018
| Android 85.1% iOS 14.9%
|
| https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/os
| willmacdonald wrote:
| As for paid versions of Monument Valley, sales from the
| iTunes App Store far outpace sales on other marketplaces.
| Purchases on iOS account for 73 percent of Ustwo's $14.4
| million of revenue, while only 17 percent of that total
| revenue came from Google Play.
|
| https://www.polygon.com/2016/5/20/11724058/monument-
| valley-s...
| leppr wrote:
| This particular data point is irrelevant since the game
| launched on Android one year after its iOS debut, losing
| the novelty and marketing factors.
| leppr wrote:
| Maybe, but it is slightly ironic to chose ' _the_ ' walled
| garden platform and also read that quote from him in the
| shared article:
|
| _> For podcasting to remain open and free, we must not
| leave major shortcomings for proprietary, locked-down
| services to exploit. Conversely, the more we strengthen the
| open podcast ecosystem with content, functionality, and
| ease of use, the larger the barrier becomes that any walled
| garden must overcome to be compelling._
| bluthru wrote:
| Similar but with less features and free:
| https://marco.org/2019/04/27/overcast-clip-sharing
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